industry news
EMEA SECURITY CONCERNS TAKE PRIORITY IN ADOPTION OF APP SERVICES
F5 Networks has announced the EMEA results of its 2017 State of Application Delivery report . The report is now in its third year , surveying over 2,000 IT , networking , application and security professionals worldwide to examine the role application services play in allowing enterprises to deploy Apps faster , smarter and more securely .
EMEA is set for a dynamic year in this respect , as the average organisation plans to deploy 18 App services in the next 12 months , compared to the 2016 global average of just 11 . As the threat landscape continues to evolve in complexity , speed and availability were for the first time deemed less important than overall application protection , with the most important services cited including network firewalls , anti-virus and SSL VPN solutions .
The highest area of investment for 2017 in EMEA was the use of on-premise private clouds ( 46 per cent ). Almost half of respondents ( 48 per cent ) stated the private cloud would have the most strategic importance to their organisation in the next two to five years , and that three quarters ( 76 per cent ) of their Apps would be in the cloud by 2017 .
The most important security feature was that the cloud should provide the same level of security and auditability as other similar on premises services ( 61 per cent ). This hints that organisations are concerned about the disruption moving to the cloud can have on operations .
Nevertheless , respondents indicated that a shift towards a more agile , multi-cloud world is gaining momentum . Globally , four out of five respondents indicated they are adopting hybrid cloud models . The main challenge here is maintaining consistent security policies across multiple environments ( 25 per cent of respondents ).
‘ Businesses are putting their money where their strategy is when it comes to cloud ,’ said Ryan Kearny , CTO , F5 Networks .
‘ There are still challenges to overcome but the global shift to embrace hybrid scenario clearly shows a growing recognition that agility and speed can be achieved without compromising security , provided there are consistent policies and solutions in place .’
On a global scale , the more Apps a company has deployed , the greater motivation to reap the operational benefits of the cloud , with respondents running the largest number of applications ( 3,000 +) reporting the highest percentage of Apps in the cloud .
Enterprise IT will evolve from services delivery to value creation , says HyperGrid
HyperGrid has said that enterprise IT will evolve from services delivery to value creation following the news that Simplivity has been acquired by HPE for $ 650m (£ 521m ).
According to HPE ’ s press release , the purchase of Simplivity ‘ advances HPE ’ s strategy in the fast growing , high margin HCI market .’ While spending on HCI is growing fast , HCI will increasingly be viewed as a use case ( specifically for VMs as a service ) rather than a market . To evolve quickly from services delivery to value creation , businesses need to simultaneously deliver a broad set of services for legacy applications , enable application modernisation where possible , and provide modern application management for developers without disruption or overhead and do all this in a way that ’ s agile , flexible and on-demand with security , control and governance , this is according to Manoj Nair , chief product officer at HyperGrid .
He explained , ‘ This shift will be driven by customers demanding integration of additional , higher layers of the stack , and innovative vendors responding to that demand with offers that support HCI as a use case , but deliver public cloud services in their data centres that include infrastructure , platform , and application management services . It is important for vendors to help CIOs and IT practitioners leapfrog from simply delivering services to creating business value by enabling business innovation while maintaining security , control and governance over delivery of IT services .’
Alongside the growth of spending on HCI , there was also significant growth in public cloud adoption as the IT industry spent more than $ 22B (£ 18B ) in 2016 as customers embraced the public cloud ’ s agility and consumption economics .
Nair continued , ‘ Like HCI , we see public cloud as a partial solution to customer challenges ; there are significant problems due to shadow IT owing to lack of control and governance , risk of cloud lock-in and poor support beyond VM-based computing . Enterprises are looking for an integrated and expanded IT solution that goes beyond HCI and public cloud options . This broader dynamic in IT is driving this vision of enterprise cloud services , which deliver a public cloud-like services in the customer data centre .’
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